


hey there mother mine (your kids are sick but they're gonna be just fine)

by gh_st



Series: the kids don't wanna come home [1]
Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Angst, Gen, Grace Hargreeves Deserves Better
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-11
Updated: 2019-06-11
Packaged: 2020-04-24 19:44:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,143
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19180144
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gh_st/pseuds/gh_st
Summary: Even after all of her children leave, Mom stays.





	hey there mother mine (your kids are sick but they're gonna be just fine)

**Author's Note:**

> so this used to be a multichapter thing but the chapters were hella short so i mushed them together into a one shot
> 
> sorry it's so short

The first to leave is Five. One day he’s there, and the next, he’s gone.

Grace stands at the doorway to the dining room, watching them eat, the same placid smile fixed on her face. They sit in silence, and something deep within her programming thinks it strange, how quiet these children must be. Their father sits at the head of the table, the only sound the forks and knives scraping against the ceramic plates. Five’s jaw clicks as he grinds his teeth, lips pursed in an angry scowl, fist clenched around his silverware.

He is upset, but it is dinner time and Reginald hates any interruption, so as per her programming, she says nothing. When he runs out, nobody chases after him. Grace thinks she should follow him. But she does not. It is against her programming.

Every day for the next two weeks, she sets the dinner table following protocol perfectly; seven plates for her seven children. Five never shows. Eventually, Reginald gets annoyed and spends an afternoon changing her code, making her work seamlessly once more—or at least, to his proper specifications.

She keeps the resulting hole in her programming to herself. She doesn’t quite understand how she can suddenly feel so—bereft, of something. But it’s hers. Her emptiness.

She keeps it to herself.

***

The second to leave is Ben, and he is ripped away from them during a mission gone wrong.

Luther, chest heaving, comes running in where she and Pogo have already set up the medical equipment, carrying Ben’s bloody, mangled body in his arms. The others follow in shortly after, and Vanya pokes her head in through the door, curious about the sudden commotion, and chokes back a sob.

Ben is lain gently on the bed and she scans him. No heartbeat. Skin already cold. There’s a palpable silence in the room, and suddenly Klaus lets out a sob and backs away. Reginald shuts the door on the other children, and comments something cruel that she quietly and immediately deletes from her data so that she doesn’t have to remember it.

After a moment, Pogo and Reginald leave her there with Ben. She gently runs a washcloth over his skin, doing her best to wipe away the blood. She thinks about doing this before when he was just a child playing soldier, after the missions that left him shaking like a leaf, far too quiet even for him.

She realizes this is the last time she will ever get to do this, and her movements stutter a bit. A glitch in her programming. She’ll have to have that fixed.

***

After Ben, Klaus has no reason to stay at all. It’s only been a week since Ben was put into the ground, and Grace feels a vague sense of surprise that he’s even stayed this long since the funeral.

Klaus leaves in the middle of the night, only the clothes on his back and everything he could fit in his pockets that were of worth to pawn off. She catches him with his leg out the window, about to leave. They make eye contact from across the hallway, and he just stares at her, eyes wide and open and pleading as he stands there still as a statue. Klaus has always worn his heart on his sleeve, but something about him now seems raw, exposed. For a moment, neither of them say anything—and then, neither of them get to.

Suddenly, before she can move to hold him, to speak with him, he is slipping out the window and he disappears into the darkness of the night. She can only stand there, watching out the window, thinking that she finally understands the meaning of regret.

***

Allison is next. She’s always had big dreams, and this place is stifling. Grace can’t exactly blame her. She just hopes that her daughter will come back and visit after she succeeds—because Grace knows that Allison will succeed. How could she not?

***

Vanya is next. For her, this house has never been a home. She has always been on the outside looking in, surrounded by people who look at her as though she isn’t really there. When Vanya was just a child—though they are all still children to Grace—she would ask Klaus if he was sure she was real, and not a ghost.

Grace has always wanted to do more for her, but it is against her programming. Grace watches her pack with a sort of detachment that used to come easily to her but now she finds she has to force, as she realizes that she is slowly and gradually watching her dysfunctional little family fall apart. She shakes her head, and doesn’t quite remember when exactly she started becoming so...human.

***

She doesn’t have a favorite, but Diego leaving might hurt the most, because she is the one who pushes him out of the nest.

He and Luther are the only of the seven left in this house, and Luther will never leave out of his devotion to his father. She watches Diego suffering, trying to best Luther at every turn only to be brought down and belittled by Reginald.

Diego has always been the sweetest to her, and so she holds his hands in hers and tells him that she knows he wants to leave.

“I c-can’t,” he says, face clouded with shame, his stutter coming back in his stress. He takes a deep breath, and then says, “I can’t leave you here, Mom.”

She smiles softly at her sweet boy, and does her best to reassure him that she will be fine when he is gone, even though something inside of her feels like it’s malfunctioning. What she tells him must work, because the next morning, he holds her tight, bag slung around his tall shoulders, and then he leaves to join the Police Academy.

***

Luther is the last, and he only leaves because Reginald sends him away. Grace watches as he prepares to get on the ship to the Moon, and wishes that he didn’t look so serious. She knows that for all his faults, Luther was certainly born loyal. As she watches the ship leave the Earth’s atmosphere, she only hopes that Luther figures out who exactly deserves that loyalty.

***

When her children have saved the world, they all end up sitting at the same dinner table where everything began, eating a meal that she has prepared for them. Klaus even manages to manifest Ben for a short while, and she swears something in her short-circuits when she sees him. She stands at the doorway to the dining room, and she listens to them laughing and happy. All of her family is here together, back home. She smiles, and not for the first time, she thinks what she’s feeling might be real.

**Author's Note:**

> pls enjoy


End file.
